Let her mourn
by Dagron
Summary: One shots on the theme of Mourning. Farewell: He had not understood then what her tears had been in grief for. Spoilers for Moroboshi Dai and manga 58. Akemi Miyano.
1. Let her mourn: Tears

Description: Short study on a moment of the series in books 18 and 19.Character study. Haibara. Rating: K.**  
**

**Let her mourn: tears.**

It had been the first time she had really seen him at work. 

Kicking a few objects around with his powered up shoes was nothing, and you merely needed a keen eye and to be good at maths to figure out where the fake money makers were. He might have impressed her then, but she had found it hard to take him seriously when he asked the gang's leader if she was one of them. As if such a clumsy enterprise could be their handiwork... He always seemed so uptight when he thought they were involved, going as far as to drop his cover in front of school kids. It had been way too tempting to yank his chain on the subject afterwards... And very much amusing. Especially since she had been one of them.

She had merely considered him lucky the first time.

The second case was a different story. She had just told him about who she was, had faced his ire, and had found herself giving details to him about her sister. Her recently deceased sister. They hadn't stayed on the topic long, but the conversation had refreshed it anew in her mind. Figuring out that she might have accidentally sent her sister information on the poison that had shrunk them didn't help either. As they drove out to the Professor who was said to have the disk they were after, her mind had been filled with recollections of her... and questions.

Did he remember meeting her? How much had he known then? Could he...?

The name did seem to ring a bell for him. She watched him ponder it, wondering whether he would figure it out, how he would react.

And then they had found the dead body.  
The dead body of the professor who had found himself with her disk amongst her sister's. Barely a week after she had left the Organisation. Too close a call for her to believe it a coincidence at first. Conan had quickly found reason to suspect it could have been a murder, and she hadn't failed to notice the striking absence of any disk that the professor might have put aside expecting their visit. She could feel their shadow, their motive... But as he had said, it was too early to be certain.

Hearing Vodka's voice on the recording machine had been both relieving and worrying at the same time. Relieving in the sense it meant they didn't have the disk, and hadn't killed Hirota. Worrying in the sense that it indicated they did indeed plan on visiting Hirota's house. Oh they wouldn't try much as long as the police were there. But if they noticed her presence...

She had watched quietly as he puzzled through the clues, doing his best to solve the closed-room murder. But her mind wasn't on the murder. Her mind was on her last meeting with Akemi. Akemi had mentioned him that day, the boy from the detective agency. Ironically it had been alongside Kudo Shinichi's name. She had not known then. She had only noticed the boy a couple of weeks later, when she had found the article with her sister's fake name, with the photo of a boy beside her dead body. The body of the one who had said she would be perfectly fine...

No. There was no way he could have figured out she was anything else than a thief, a girl who had committed suicide. He couldn't even solve a closed room murder, let alone find one of them on his own. Best to tell him to give up the case and go through the back door. She was sick of the pain, of the memories. She had seen enough; the police did not need them any more.

And yet all of a sudden he had turned, this glint in his eye. "I'll show you the truth behind this case," he had said. His grin was so cocky, his eyes so certain, it was hard not to see the Teenage Detective she had read about in the news. All of a sudden he had taken out his bow tie and borrowed Professor Agasa's voice. Humph, amusing. You want to play puppet do you? Might as well play along. It wouldn't be long before his theory would be proved wrong yet again. She might as well challenge him herself.

But her challenge did not make him pause, he challenged her back, pointing out the most insignificant of details that suddenly pulled everything into place. She watched, -dumbfounded, as all the others were,- as he proved it, as he demonstrated the how, pointed to the who, explained the why. He had managed to figure it out.

He had figured it out.

And if he could figure this much out...

"Why?" she had asked, her voice weak as unwanted emotion pushed forth nonetheless. "Why didn't you help... my sister?"

He had the cheek to not understand what she meant. Did she need to spell it out for him? Masami Hirota was Akemi Miyano's fake name. The Billion Yen thief was her sister, the one he had failed to save. Oh yes, she could read it on his face now. He remembered the case...  
Anger fuelled her emotion as she went on to ask him why, with such a keen eye for detail and a talent for deduction, he hadn't figured out her fake identity.  
She couldn't understand.  
Why hadn't he seen it? Why couldn't he have saved her?  
Why had her sister died?

Why?

The question lay forgotten, as the tears took over. He stood silent, as she gripped his shirt and let her emotion flow, her anguish take form. There was no answer to give. All one could do was let her mourn.

**Fin.**


	2. Let her mourn: Farewell

**Warning!** _Spoilers _for arc book 58 and 59 involving Moroboshi Dai.  
If the names Moroboshi Dai and Andre Camel are not familiar, you may wish to stop reading now.**  
**

**Let her mourn: Farewell.**

_"PS: If I manage to leave the organisation after this,  
will you go out with me as a real boyfriend?  
- Akemi."_

When he had read her email, discovered she had somehow managed to find a way to contact him despite their situation, he hadn't known what to feel. She knew about him. Had probably known long before he told her. After two years without seeing her, he still remembered her vividly, still wondered why she had never said anything. He had not needed this message to remind him of her. She had always been in his thoughts.

But what the mail had given him was hope. A futile hope that maybe, just maybe, he might not have ruined her life. That he could still...

She wanted out. She wanted her sister out. She had agreed to make a deal with them.

He knew she was smarter than she let on. He knew she would have seen that the "deal" was a trap... But he also knew her to be an optimist.  
It was lucky that she had sent him the gist of her plans. They were far from perfect, though the situation was hard to improve on anyway, but maybe, with the help of the FBI, they could help her before it was too late... and bring them down.

He went to James Black about the email. Told him of its contents without showing it in its entirety, in case he commented on the postscript. This was not a time for his boss to question him about anything irrelevant to the case.

She hadn't mentioned the mission date, and had forbidden him to reply to her. It was too difficult and risky to trace the mail back to sender. James was reticent, but he allowed Shuichi to take the first flight available to Japan. If the contents of the email proved to be true, if it was made clear there was no trap intended for him, then James would make readily available to him any FBI resources he needed. James would not be able to accompany him. He had to stay behind and assist Jodie in her investigations on one of their American operatives.

When he arrived in Tokyo, it was very easy for him to find some confirmation of the mail's contents. He spent a day driving around Tokyo, getting his bearings again, seeing how much the town had or had not changed in two years... reminiscing. By the time he got back to his hotel room, there she was, on the news, her features disguised under a crude hood and sunglasses. It was a crop from the street's security video footage. She had already accomplished her mission. She had stolen the one billion yen.

From what little the newscast showed, her silhouette had hardly changed since the organisation had sniffed him out. What worried him more were the silhouettes of the other two... One very tall man, and one rather stocky. The tall one had killed a man during the heist. He couldn't help but fear they might otherwise be known by the names of Gin and Vodka. But no... He didn't think the two most important members of the organisation would participate directly in so blatant a crime. Gin was smarter than that. Either way, Shuichi would have to investigate quietly... Especially if he hoped to reach Akemi without **them **finding out.

-

A month went by with him hardly finding a lead, on either the billion yen robbery or where Akemi and her sister were. He would spend his days trying to get insider information on the case, reading about other cases, mostly suspicious deaths, in the hope of finding some clue, of finding her before it was too late. He couldn't help but admire how well thought out the theft had been. There had been good inside knowledge on the details of the bank's transfer, a quick getaway and the manpower necessary to handle any complications. They left no incriminating evidence, no distinctive details. Only an empty van and a dead guard. He could only hope that sooner or later someone would make a mistake... He could only hope it wouldn't be a deadly one, he could only hope it wouldn't be her.

When he first encountered the news of a Hirota Kenzou's death, he thought it would turn out to be another dead end. He only investigated it because of the land lady's reported testimony about the man's strange attitude.

_"He paid for a year's worth of rent beforehand, and told me not to ask any questions...  
and he paid in brand new bills too."_

It quickly intrigued him, how this man's situation reminded him of many a case he had read about... An accomplice running away with the loot. Obviously he had been found, and killed. He had been strangled by a tall man, his murder clumsily disguised as a suicide, unpremeditated.  
Hirota had been a stocky man, just like one of the three thieves had been. He could have been killed by the tall one, the same one who had killed a guard instead of just shoving him away. It only took the mention of a missing daughter, by the name of Masami, for him to suspect he might be on to something.

A quick check of the victim's background came up with no daughter whatsoever. Shuichi had no doubt. He had found her trail.  
He checked the banking company's employee register too, finding the daughter's supposed name there. She had been temporarily employed there for a month prior to the theft, and still was working there. She looked like Akemi, despite the clothing style she wore to disguise her figure. But some questions remained... Where was she now? Where was the tall acolyte? And when where Gin and Vodka going to act?  
She had obviously convinced them to give her a chance to get the money back from the back-stabbing taxi driver. Now that they had cleared Hirota's flat, all there was left for "Masami" to do was distract the remaining accomplice and hand over the money as planned.

He called James, and then headed to "Masami's" work place. She hadn't been to work that day. Her home number and address were fake. Her colleagues hardly knew her as more than a sweet girl. As always, Akemi had been good at hiding her inner turmoil. The only information of interest was that one of her colleagues remembered seeing her in a café with a person that sounded remarkably like her sister a couple of times... Once just a couple of days prior. Shuichi decided to meet James and Jodie there. He didn't expect to meet Akemi or Shiho there. His luck could only take him so far. By the time his colleagues arrived there from their flight, another lead had popped up. The tall man had been found in a hotel room. He had been poisoned, and beside him they had found aluminum cases... The ones the billion yen had been in. Shuichi put down his listening device as soon as he had the location of the hotel. The corpse had been warm. The trail was hot.

... And he wanted to see for himself whether Akemi had been the one to use that poison.

When they reached the hotel, it was easy for them to notice the police presence near the scene. Jodie was the one to see the teenage girl approach one of the plain clothes men amongst the officers, to hear her mention Masami and a gunshot. On Jodie's insistent demand, they followed the police car the two had jumped into. They drove up to a port, the area where containers were unloaded onto the docks, ready to be taken away by trucks when their time came. James appeared distracted when he stopped the car. It was only later that he told Shuichi of his bad feeling as he had noticed a Porsche driving away from the scene. Shuichi was the one to approach closest to the commotion, his Japanese features allowing him more discretion than his colleagues as he neared nexus of the police force and ambulance men called there.

The two ambulance men stood, useless, with their stretcher in hand. Around them could be found the police men, standing, waiting, taking in the scene. A drizzle of rain had started to fall from the heavens. A grade school boy stood gravely as the young girl that the FBI agents had followed let flow her tears. Someone must have taken charge then, pushed by some insane urge to make everything move on in the hopes of drowning the tragedy. Photos were taken and the stretcher was put to use, as the plain clothes man stood gravely while the girl (his daughter?), clung to the small boy. It was only upon noticing the child's taut fists that Shuichi realized his own fists were clenched too. For some reason he had trouble registering that what he saw was as he had feared. The child had been right beside her, his fingers tainted by the pool of blood at his feet. She had been inert. She was dead.

He left the scene just as they started to cord it off.  
He hated himself for doing so, but he couldn't trust himself to stay calm this time. If he went and tried to intervene in this investigation, as he really should if he wanted to find any lead on her murderers in time to find them, he knew he would be hard pushed not to reveal his knowledge of her, his hunch as to who her murderer was, her motives...

Her motives, what were they really? Always the same question... Why had she never told him anything, why had she never sent him any message? Why had she sent only that one message then?

"So?"

Shuichi barely acknowledged James's question at first. After a short moment it registered, and he replied absently.  
"We were too late. They killed her."

He ignored Jodie's gasp, paid no attention to the tightening of James's hold on his communicator. His mind was full of the memories of his last meeting with her.  
Akemi's weak concession of a reaction to what should have been a shocking confession, followed by a half hearted effort at waving it off as a joke... the tears that had completely betrayed her act. He had expected tears of anger or betrayal, but those had been neither, no...  
They had been tears of grief, but he had not understood then, no. He couldn't comprehend then what they had been in grief for.

Now he knew. He could see why it had seemed so obvious for her that day. That was why she had sent him that message. A final farewell, in case she failed, a hint of an answer, a nudge, in case she managed.

_"Will you go out with me as a real boyfriend?"_

"Say, Black?"

"Yes, Akai?" The FBI head put down the communicator he had been using before looking at Akai. The elder man's expression was one of quiet concern. Jodie had left the car to try and rapidly scout the surroundings.

"Do you mind if I refer to our '_enemy_' as '_girlfriend_' from now on?"

The car remained quiet for a moment as the rain pattered away on the roof. In the end James lowered his head and replied.  
"I think that will be the perfect code name for our target."

-

A few days later, after bidding farewell to James and Jodie as he told them he would continue to investigate in the city, Shuichi took the occasion to find himself some peaceful retreat to reflect in. Oh, he wouldn't stay long... It was just an illusion he entertained, a memory of the secret corners she used to show him. She had a knack for finding quiet corners to hide away in, to watch the moon or observe the scenery from.  
Opening her mail on his phone, he placed it in front of him.

"A real boyfriend, short of protecting her, would avenge his girlfriend's death," he whispered. "Someone who truly loved you would do so without staining the ideals you dreamed of, wouldn't he?"

He grabbed his hair, which he had tied beforehand. With the silent slice of a blade, he let long strands of black hair fall to the floor around him.

"This is until I capture Gin, Akemi. This is until I dismantle the organisation and save your sister from it, you hear?"

"This I promise you. On this, you may rest in piece."

With that, he bowed his head, stood, and closed both mail and phone. He did not delete the mail. It had been the sign that Akemi had come to deal with the loss of their relationship, had finished mourning it. Similarly, he would only delete it once he too had mourned and made his peace with his guilt, his loss; once he had answered her question, once he had sent his own farewell.

He knew he shouldn't blame himself. He couldn't help it if his mission had failed those two years prior. He certainly would not blame it on Camel. The poor man had made an honest mistake, an unhappy yet natural assumption.

The only one he could blame was the one who had seen through their plan, the one whom he had fruitlessly waited for till dawn. He was the one responsible for her death.

_Gin.  
_

"I'll make that person regret rejecting me with tears of blood."

**Fin.**


End file.
